Service of beverages to patrons attending venues of the above kind can be problematic given the large numbers of patrons often in attendance and the need to serve patrons during short periods of time. In this respect, it is often the cases that, particularly during sporting events, the major sales of beverages occurs close to the start of play, as well as during breaks in play in which patrons leave their seats to use the amenities of the venue. Thus, during these times, patrons will often visit the food and beverage amenities to purchase food and/or beverage. The breaks in particular can be quite short in many sports, such as for 10 or 15 minutes only. For example, three breaks occur during a game of Australian Rules Football and these consist of two approximately 6 minute breaks and a main 20 minute break.
In many venues, beverage cups are filled individually by hand-operated beverage dispensers. These dispensers are relatively cheap, but they operate very slowly and during peak demand can impede the delivery of beverages significantly. One of the difficulties associated with slow delivery of beverages is that it tends to reduce the sale of beverages and so have an impact on venue profitability. Patrons do not want to spend time in queues, particularly when the venue event is underway, while patrons often use the scheduled breaks in events for socialising purposes and when faced with a long wait for beverage service will often decide to go without.
To speed up the delivery of beverages to patrons, a greater number of staff can be used with a greater number of beverage dispensers. However, this increases staff costs and given that the major problem with the speed of beverage delivery exists only before the event commences and during the breaks that occur during an event, the greater number of staff can often be under-utilised other than during those times.
Because of the limited time in which to serve large numbers of patrons, semi-automatic beverage dispensers have been developed which operate to fill beverage cups in advance of the purchase of those cups. Thus, beverage dispensers are available that will fill a large tray of beverage cups, for example that might include four rows of four cups and once all the cups of the tray are full of beverage, the tray can be shifted to a position at which the dispense operator can remove the cups from the tray or customers can take the desired number of cups from the tray for purchase. This form of tray is only for use in the filling procedure and is returned for restacking with unfilled beverage cups once all of the filled cups have been removed.
Beverage carriers or cup carrying containers have been made available at venues that allow individual customers to carry up to four filled beverage cups at one time with relative ease and in a way that the cups are kept relatively stable. Some of these cup carrying containers allow up to four cups to be carried by one hand. Where these cup carrying containers are used with existing beverage dispensers, the customer takes the filled beverage cup from the filling or service point and loads it into the cup carrying container. For example, the customer lifts the required number of cups out of the tray of the semi-automatic beverage dispenser described above and loads them into the cup carrying container and then proceeds to the counter for payment.
While the use of cup carrying containers enables the carriage of a plurality of filled beverage cups with relative stability, their use requires the service personnel or the customer to load the filled beverage cups into the cup carrying container from the dispensing tray, or dispensing surface or service counter, on which the beverage cups are filled. Because beverage cups are usually filled to the cup rim, the loading process can result in spillage. This is particularly relevant to the use of semi-automatic beverage dispensers, as the cups have to be lifted out of the tray and the lifting process can exacerbate spillage unless the loading process is carried out slowly and carefully. In the case of the purchase of four beverages, the customer must load each of the filled beverage cups individually into the cup carrying container before lifting the container to move away from the beverage dispenser and out of the path of other customers. Thus, time is taken for loading the cup carrying container that can slow the process of serving beverages to customers and while that time is only small for each customer, during peak demand, the loading time can be such overall delays are significant resulting in lost beverage sales.
Also, the process of loading the beverages from the dispensing tray or dispensing surface can be unhygienic given that the beverage cups are normally grasped by the drinking rim for loading into a beverage carrier, which means that the rim can be contaminated with germs that can later come into contact with the lips of the consumer. Also, that kind of handling often means that either the dispense operator or the customer's finger tips touch the liquid within the cup which is to be drunk by someone other than the dispense operator or the customer. In that case, the experience can be unpleasant for both the serving personnel and customer because either is left with wet and/or sticky hands/fingers and there are obvious issues in terms of the transmission of germs.
It is an object of the present invention to provide beverage dispensing equipment or arrangements which overcomes or at least alleviates one or more of the foregoing disadvantages.